I Love Danish Football

There is certainly no doubt that the Danish-American superstar Viggo Mortensen is bitten by the football craze. And he especially loves the Danish national football team who he supports both in success and in adversity.

For instance, Viggo Mortensen was dressed in a red-white DBU jumper when he was recently in Toronto, Canada to present his new film Eastern Promises directed by David Cronenberg.

The film, where Viggo Mortensen plays a Russian gangster in London, has been chosen for the film festival in Toronto, where it will be shown at a large gala presentation on Saturday 8 September.

"I love to see the Danish national football team play. My heart beats for Danish football," Viggo Mortensen says to Ekstra Bladet.

And he thinks it 100 per cent. Viggo was also wearing a red-white national team jumper when in the autumn of 2005 he went to the gala opening in Denmark of his film A History of Violence, which by the way was also directed by David Cronenberg.

And when Viggo Mortensen recently presented his film Alatriste at a large screening in Ringsted Kongrescenter, it was definitely emphasized that the actor lives and breathes football at a club level too.

When Viggo walked up on to the stage, he suddenly saw the cinema curtains, which coincidentally were in the same red and blue colours of San Lorenzo from Buenos Aires, Argentina. He went straight over and kissed the curtains in the hope that it would bring luck and happiness to his team next season, and then he pulled out a gigantic flag of the football club and wrapped it around his body.

Viggo's football heart beats both for Denmark and Argentina. He has a Danish father and lots of members of his Danish family are settled in the Ringsted neighbourhood. At the same time he has a strong affiliation to Argentina, where he grew up.

So who would Viggo side with if, for example, Denmark and Argentina met in the next World Championship final?

"Oh, that's a very difficult question that I have often asked myself. It's not unthinkable at all, because both Denmark and Argentina play good football," Mortensen says, and adds: "But if they really met each other in the World Championship final, I'd buy both countries national team jumpers and cut them through the middle. And then I'd sew them together again to make one jumper. In that way I could cheer both Denmark and Argentina. But I think it would be very difficult as far as I can see if the two teams play against each other."

The film star reports to Ekstra Bladet that he is happy to be participating in yet another David Cronenberg film.

"Eastern Promises is just as good a film as A History of Violence. And gradually David Cronenberg and I are getting to know the good, the bad and the ugly sides of each other," reports Mortensen, who has also finished shooting the film Good, where he plays the good, moral Professor Halder, which is set in a 1930s Germany that is slowly spinning towards Nazism, and he ends up like one of the evil ones himself.